Volume 24  August, 2005  Issue No. 8

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENT

 WHAT: SUPERCOMPUTER SALE

WHERE: COLLINSVILLE GATEWAY CONVENTION CENTER
DIRECTIONS:

WHEN: August 26, 3-9
             August 27, 10-7
             August 28, 11-5

WORK THE SHOW, GET IN FREE!

CHECK FOR SIGN UP SHEET AT THIS MEETING

 

The Next Meeting

Progressive Raffle

Jackpot is up to $200.00!!

33 cards left 

 

Regular Meeting


 

 

Wednesday, August 17

Caseyville Township Bldg. 
10001 Bunkum Rd.
Fairview Heights, IL

Directions:      Map:

 

Board 
Meeting

Wednesday, September 7

Ponderosa Steakhouse

5 Eastport Plaza Drive 
Collinsville, IL
(618)345-5006

Directions: 

Meal starts about 6:00. Meeting starts at 7:00

Everyone is welcome

   

 

The Presentation

This
Meeting

 

Remote Access by Chuck Hill

 

Next
Meeting

 

Shawn from Microsoft?

 

 

Hello From The Pres...
Mike Taphorn

PROGRESSIVE RAFFLE CONTINUES TO CONTINUE TO GROW 

The raffle prize is up to $200 and we have 33 cards left in the deck. If we draw your number, you get a prize and a shot at pulling the joker out of the cards that are left when it is your turn. We're trying to come up with more good prizes for the Holiday Party Raffle. Please let me know if you have a favorite item that you think would be a good give away or if you want to donate something good to be given away. 

 

CD/DVD REPAIR MACHINE 

As I said last month, the Board Members and I contemplated having the club get a good CD/DVD Repair machine ($350-$500). I bought a decent one at Wal-Mart for $38.72, but, then Chuck Hill sent me an article from PC Magazine with a review of inexpensive CD repair tools that rated the Aleratec as the Editor's Choice. We talked about it at the last meeting and we collectively decided to get the top kit per PC Mag's recommendation. I ordered three of them and they will be at the next meeting.  I purchased three of them because they have three different modes. They can just Clean , Repair  or Buff. The buffing mode buffs them back to usefulness after the repair pads scrape the scratches out of them. They retail for $40 each, but, Amazon had them for $25 each, so, we spent the $75 and we'll see how they work. Please do not bring your entire collection of CD's to be cleaned. If you want to try them out, please bring one scratched CD/DVD with you and we'll test them out. I don't want everyone to get upset if they have to wait in line. Each disc will take a minute or two to go through the processes and we only have a few hours at each meeting. Bring one and then we'll decide how to proceed with bigger collections if we like how they work.  

COMPUTER SHOW = COMING VERY SOON 

Everyone is starting to see the advertisements for the show on the billboards etc. I hope that means that they are going to do it right this time.

Put the show on your calendars for August 26th-28th. Please sign up for the show at the meeting and/or just show up and help in the booth if you can..

COMPUTER DEMO = CHUCK HILL's REMOTE ACCESS EXTRAVAGANZA 

Shawn from Microsoft may be with us in November due to a new baby and a few conflicting trips out of town over the next few months, but, we have someone even better to share his knowledge with us. It's Chuck Hill, and he is going to go over the multitude of ways to gain access to your computer when you are not home. Remote access is it's name and he'll show us how to play the game. I need to watch this one, so, I hope there aren't a lot of computers that need fixing...

GRIZZLIES GAME 

Let me know if you are interested in attending a Grizzlies baseball game. We'd like to go before the season is over...

See you at the meeting …

 Mike

 

The Computer Master
Jim Tomlinson, Vice President




See you at the meeting!
Enjoy.....JT

 

 

The Treasurer's Report
Dianne White


TREASURER’S REPORT

DIANNE WHITE, TREASURER AS OF AUG. 1ST, 2005

BALANCE AS OF JULY 1ST, 2005 $5,526.96

INCOME:
4 NEW MEMBERSHIPS@15 EA 60.00

3 RENEWALS @15 EA. 45.00

CD SALES .00

JULY ROLL-OVER JACKPOT 92.00

TOTAL INCOME: $197.00 $5723.96

EXPENSES:
PONDEROSA-AUG. DEPOSIT 20.00

TOTAL EXPENSES: $20.00 $5703.96

BALANCE AS OF AUG. 1ST, 2005 $5703.96

ROLL OVER JACKPOT $200.00

CARDS LEFT 33

 

The Secretary's Report
Carlos Mariles

July 05 minutes.   

President Mike Taphorn opened the meeting by welcoming the members, new members and guests.  He continued by explaining about our club website and how to use it.  He announced that our regular presentation had to be cancelled due to circumstances beyond our control.  Mike also explained briefly about the upcoming computer show coming to Collinsville pretty soon and called upon the membership to volunteer our services to help during those three days to assist in any capacity that will help our club.  He also said that there were instances when a CD could not be read due to scratches on it and the information was, for all practical purposes, lost.  He recommended that we research and try to procure two or three of the best buffers to remove and polish the CD that way the information would not be lost completely.  The buffers would be available to all our members during our regular meetings.  More information to be presented during our next meeting as to the brands, quality and prices. Also he asked the membership for their thoughts about obtaining a CD burner for the club. More to be discussed next meeting.  Our own Membership Chairman, J.C.,  informed us that there were 129 in good standing.  Our Business sponsor Mr. Bob Havlin informed us that Micro Soft will be hosting a show during Aug. the 2nd.  The membership was invited to attend any of the two shows, one at 8am and the second at 1pm.  Good information comes out those meetings according to Mr. Havlin.  Jason, our librarian, informed us that the new and improved monthly CD was available and also that he would gladly replace any defective CDs bought last month.  He also said that he expanded the contents of the new CD.  

The Q and A followed the regular meeting and an impromptu presentation on Microsoft Graphic Suite was given by Mike Taphorn. 

Our next meeting will be held on Aug. 17th at 7pm in the same location.

Till then,

Carlos

 

 

The Membership Chairman
JC Spelce

Number of Members in attendance last month:  
Total Membership Before last month's meeting  
      Number of Members renewing last meeting    
      Number Of Members  joined last meeting   
      Number of members dropped    
Current Total Membership   
     Number of Members in Good Standing  129
     Number of Members on Probation  

The Web Master
Team Effort

 


Librarian
Jason Whitener


Assistant  
Dennis McMurtrey

The Librarians

 

Well for this month’s disk release I’ve put together a small collection of cool freeware/shareware utilities that I’ve found on the web.  Lots of different things here.  I’ll give a list here and then try and highlight a few of the programs: 

7Zip - Zip Compression alternative           

Powerpoint Backgrounds

A-Squared Personal Trojan Scanner            

BWMeter V2.0.2 - Track net activity          

Cd Winder - File cataloguer                  

Cool Web Shredder - fixes Cool Web Trojan attacks

Direct X9.0c - Newest DirectX Upgrade       

Ewido Security Suite v3.50 - Trojan Killer   

Express Assist 7 Trial - backup Outlook-cookies

Firepanel XP - upgrade firewalls to Service Pack 2

Foxit PDF Editor 1.2 - Freeware pdf editor   

Foxit Reader - Freeware pdf reader           

PageGrab v3.0 - Graphics image grabber      

Irfan View - Photo Viewer                    

Jalbum - create online photo albums          

JiWire - portable wi-fi finder               

Maximus DVD v1.2 - Dvd Player                 

OpenOffice V1.1.4 - Complete MSOffice replacement

pdfcreator v0.8.0 - Freeware PDF Creator     

SlimServer v5.2.1 - Play music from home remote

SyncBack - Backup-Synchronize files-folders  

WinDirStat - Windows Statistics-cleanup      

World Wind - 3D Viewable Globe (Sat. imaging)

X-Setup Pro 6.6 Final - Windows Tweaking     

XnView - Multi-format graphics viewer        

Xplorer2 Pro - Windows Explorer replacement   

First, I’ve included a little over 50 megs of Freeware Powerpoint Backgrounds.  Most of these are setup as PowerPoint files, however some are just images that need to be imported to be used, however they are all freely distributable.  A couple of club members had requested some office support files, specifically some different PowerPoint files, so I tried to get some to put on a disk release.  Please let me know if these work for you and if you’d like to see similar MS support files and I’ll see what I can do.  

Next, I’ve got several security/internet minded programs, like BWMeter v2.0.2 – it tracks network activity, Ewido Security Suite 3.50 – it’s a great Trojan killer, Cool Web Shredder – which fixes Cool Web Trojan Attacks, Firepanel XP – which upgrades firewalls to be compatible with Service Pack 2, and JiWire – a portable Wi-Fi detector for your laptop.  

Also, I’ve included some other cool stuff like freeware PDF viewer and PDF editor from Foxit (which neither one has to be installed, but will run from a portable device.), a PDF creator called pdfcreator v0.8.0, and OpenOffice v1.1.4 – which is a MS Office compatible freeware office suite. 

There are several other graphics utilities, and file editors, but the other program I’d like to highlight, is called World Wind.  This program is from NASA.  It is a fully rendered globe of the Earth that is zoomable, and has uses actual satellite photo’s to make it fully realistic.  This is a large part of the cd as the program is over 180 megs, and of course if very graphics intensive.  However, I thought it was well worth the space. 

That’s all I have for right now, however a few suggestions were made at the last board of directors meetings for new disk releases.  If anyone finds things on the internet that they like downloaded but either have a slow internet connection, or don’t want to take the time to get, just drop me line.  I’d be happy to d/l them for you and put them on a disk for pickup at the next club meeting.  The normal $1.00 per disk fee would be assessed, and I could also include that file in a disk release.  Most of the time I tend to be at a loss as to what club members are using or would like to use given the opportunity.  If you have any needs in this area or are looking for a specific kind of program, please let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige as I’m able to. 

                                                                        Thanx, 

                                                                        Jason Whitener

 

The Editor
Chuck White

I've been lazy again this month, nothing to report. I'll be interviewing for Newsletter Editor or Webmaster soon.

 

Mitch's Corner
Mitch  Graves

GCC - Tweaks and Fixes for Windows XP Inbox
Enjoy - Mitch
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

***


Later,

 

 

 
 

Miscellaneous
 Things Of Interest And Importance To Someone 


---

 

 

The Lighter Side 
Of Computing

Computer Stupidities

Check this out. VERY funny.

http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/

***

http://www.youmightbe.com/pages/computergeek.html

This was inspired by a site that apparently no longer exists. I'm starting this one from scratch.
* when you have to write with a pen, you find yourself using the Palm Graffiti characters. (Scott K. McGrath)
* you think (x<<6)+(x<<4) is a perfectly natural way to multiply by 80.( ck )
* you've gutted and rebuilt your computer 5 times since you last changed the oil in your car. ( ck )
* you know what a router is, and you know what a bit is, but you've never heard of a router bit. ( ck )
* you know the square root of 65536 is 256 without having to do the math. ( ck )
* you consider 65536 and 256 "nice round numbers". ( ck )
* ...and you *always* put the period outside the quotes, since you're not quoting the end of the sentence...what the hell do English majors know, anyway. ( ck )
* you see a good-looking girl and you DESPERATELY want her e-mail address so you can get to know her.
* you wake up and realize that your sleep pattern has been following an algorithm.
* your computer chair has the permanent and stiff indentation of your butt in it. (Samuel L Jacobson)
* the only tan you've ever acquired comes from your monitor. (Samuel L Jacobson)
* you have assembled your own Linux distribution, and re-wrote some of the more inefficient code, just for fun. ( Hmmm... it's a thought... )
* every time someone says "I like iMacs" you get mad and shout out "So you only go for the looks, do you? Superficial guy! The inner qualities are what's important, not the looks! Beauty is only skin-deep!" (courtney@gurlmail.com )
* when asked if you have more than one hard drive, you answer "In which computer?" (melvan)
* you postpone your moving date so your computers can set new uptime records. (melvan)
* given the choice between a T3 and a date with a good looking guy/girl, you'd take the T3. (melvan)
* you've ever been successful at catching a spammer.
* you call sex with your cute girlfriend "CuteFTP." (cyberfan@gmx.net)
* you spend more time changing settings in Windows 98 than using it. (cyberfan@gmx.net )
* you dream of high-end computers instead of beautiful girls. (cyberfan@gmx.net )
* you get angry when someone says they own a Pentium IV processor. (Andy )
* your friends have a club with the word .com in it. ( Andy )
* you almost get in a fight when a small child says there is no internet. ( Andy )
* you think everyone should have an opinion about Bill Gates.
* you refer to having sex as setting up a LAN! ( cyberfan@gmx.net )
* you refer to going to the toilet as "extracting to the temp folder" and flushing the toilet as "deleting the temp folder". (cyberfan@gmx.net )
* you refer to eating and drinking as uploading! ( cyberfan@gmx.net)
* you understand and find www.ircnews.com funny.
* you've ever passed notes at school in binary. ( skoink@home.com )
* you regard the "User Friendly" virus as a good thing.
* you've had an article appear at segfault.org.
* you've figured out how to crash Windows NT on a 128MB system, using only Internet Explorer and Notepad.
* you snicker whenever someone asks how much memory is needed for Windows NT to run smoothly.
* you go into a computer store and takeover a discussion for a salesman on the specs and merits of a computer while he site there nodding as you make the sale. ( soljaz4life@msn.com )
* you've ever written a useless program just for the "fun" of it. (cyberfan@gmx.net )
* ...or you prefer writing useless programs.
* a 23 GB HD, color laser, four 128MB DIMMs, and a 21" monitor would beat out Sarah Michelle Gellar, Cameron Diaz, Heather Graham, and Cindy Crawford.
* you can actually read the error message details when a Windows program has a problem. ( cyberfan@gmx.net )
* you spend more time chatting on-line in one day then you do in a week's worth of actual conversation with people face-to-face.
* there are two magazines in front of you, the newest issue of PC Magazine and the other a porno. And you choose the PC mag over the porno.
* you refer to using the bathroom as downloading.
* the number of computers in your house exceeds the number of relationships you've had in your lifetime.
* if you HAS A job or you IS A human being. (this one might be above the heads of a few computer geeks, too.)
* ...and you didn't correct the grammar of that last item.
* if (DEC 25 = OCT 31) means true to you.
* your computer costs more and runs better than your car (fuddoson@hotmail.com )
* your watch is set to GMT. Always. (After all, it's the only time that makes logical sense.)
* in real life, you tell people to go to http://www.hell.com/ (Mel, mel_is_evil@yahoo.com)
* when you're reading a magazine and you see an underlined passage, you feel compelled to click on it. (Dave Tibbs)
* you have the Linux Penguin sitting on your monitor
* ... and you know the penguin's name.
* everytime you go to write a note, you put your hands on your desk, as if looking for a keyboard to type it on. (Miko)
* you've ever debated the merits of the FVWM95 window manager...
* ...with yourself.
* you're grossly offended that anyone would want to make their Linux box work anything like Windows 95.
* you wake up wondering which directory you're in. (Jason J., harlidobib@redshift.com ).
* you set up your old computer next to your new one 2 months ago so that you could transfer files and you've been using them "both" since. (Visitor submission, Keith S.)
* you have more computers now than you've had relationships in your lifetime.
* your wallpaper is made up of Linux code. (visitor submission)
* your favorite pasttime is IRC on Saturday nights. (visitor submission)
* your computer is set for Dvorak... but your keyboard is actually a qwerty.
* ...you know what Dvorak and Qwerty refer to.
* you have a PC for every person in the house, and still think you need one more. What if one goes down!? (Laura Goodwin,
LaLaura@nospam.cyberzone.net)
* you salivate when you hear the word, "upgrade" (Laura Goodwin)
* instead of laughing you say "El-Oh-El!" (Laura Goodwin)
* you have actually heard someone do this in real life.
* ...and you actually understood what it meant.
* you dream in code. (Laura Goodwin)
* you not only know what Be OS is, you have an opinion about it. (Laura Goodwin)
* you want to be the first one on your block to be wet-wired. (Laura Goodwin)
* you dual boot because you want to be able to play some of them there cool new games. (Laura Goodwin)
* you bought a super socket-7 motherboard, not because you really needed it, but because you got it for only 40.00 via an online auction. Now you have a reason to build that extra computer you don't really need. (Laura Goodwin)
* to you, the word "scuzzy" is sexy. (Laura Goodwin)
* your girlfriend kisses you on the neck and you think "uh oh, priority interupt!". (Dave Tibbs)
* you and the campus Unix Sysadmin have a geek contest.
* ...and you win.
* you check your e-mail before you brush your teeth in the morning. (Abdel, a5abdull@scs.ryerson.ca ).
* you believe Unix/Linux is the most superior operating system out there (Abdel).
* you e-mail yourself notes rather than writing them...
* ...and you can justify the advantages of doing so.
* ...or you actually reply to the note.
* you can program in more languages than you can speak. (From: Dan Good, evan013@hotmail.com)
* you refer to your computer as a friend.
* you can talk to your computer without being sarcastic or raising your voice.
* you talk to your computer the way most people talk to their significant other.
* you use old CD-ROMs as coasters...
* ...and you've collected a matching set for every room in your house.
* with the exception of the blood-sucking part, you have the same basic characteristics as a vampire.

Both submitted by Chuck H.



If you have something you want to share, just send it to me using the above mailbox 
or catch me at a meeting.